She looked into the vacant sky. The clouds, the gulls, the traitorous peewits, all were gone together, swept away by the wind. The birds that had left us made so great a lack, we felt as if all the birds of the air had gone. Stags were roaring in the corries; their throats like the brawling streams did not break the silence that we listened to, nor convince us that our empty country was peopled, but rather they made a background for silence.

The day grew warm. We sat outside the cave to enjoy the sun. The birches were bare, their drab yellow leaves carpeted the ground; the rowan trees had lost their leaves. But here and there in the smoky woods we saw a leafless tree hung with scarlet berries, daring winter. A cloud of small birds swept along the ground beside us, and into the air like leaves in a whirling wind. They fell, and rose, all in one flock, and settled for a moment amongst the birches under our cave, above the loch.

‘Autumn’s done,’ I said again. ‘I must get a beast tomorrow. Pretty soon the stags will be too lean to eat.’

‘It’s warm still,’ Terry said. ‘There’s heat in the sun. If it holds like this to-morrow couldn’t we do something, Hugh? Couldn’t we have a picnic?’

‘The ground’s as wet as muck,’ I reminded her.

‘Och, then we mustn’t sit on the ground. It’s the last chance of the year, Hugh. We were always having picnics in the old days—’

‘I’d like to bathe once more in Loch Coulter, before winter comes,’ I confessed.

‘Won’t it be dreadfully cold?’ she asked, shivering.

‘No,’ I answered, ‘with all the rain there’s been the loch will be as warm as milk. What’ll we have to eat, Terry?’

‘I hope it’s a day like this,’ she said; and then, ‘When will the birds come back again, Hugh?’

2 OCTOBER

AS WE WENT down and came near Loch Coulter, Terry said, ‘When shall we bathe again, Hugh?’

‘Mebbe in March,’ I told her. ‘It can be hot in March.’

‘We must begin to think about next year,’ she went on slowly.

‘What are we going to think about next year?’ I demanded.

‘We can’t live for ever on our stores, Hugh.’

‘Well?’ I inquired roughly.

‘Don’t be angry with me to-day, Hugh,’ she pleaded.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to sound angry. Oh, it’s always the same, when we mean to spend one day just being happy worries come crowding on us—’

‘I didn’t mean to worry you, Hugh,’ she whispered. ‘Och, never heed next year—’

‘We must heed it,’ I said.

‘Not to-day,’ she replied, ‘another day, Hugh, but not to-day.’